Firstly, I need to point out that Tec-City are manufacturers so you won’t be able to buy these products from Tec-City as a consumer. If you’re a reseller or distributor though, you might want to take a look because they have some good solutions and, clearly evident through my discussions with them about solar solutions, a lot of knowledge.
You might recognise some of the products here. Tekkeon and TabletKiosk have used them. I used one on my Solar-ultra mobile PC tour too and was very happy with it until I killed it one day.
The two products that I highlight in the video are the MP3450E and the MP2300.
If you’re a reseller or distributor looking for a good quality power bank solution, take a closer look at Tec-City. If you’re a reseller or distributor that carries these products, please contact us and we’ll link you in to this article.
Ultimate-Netbook, a big accessory retailer based in Europe, has just announced a 10% discount code (Psst Use the offer code WEBultra mobile PC to get the discount) for our readers so now would probably be the best time to tell you about two Ultimate-Netbook products that I’ve had for a while. A universal power pack and a universal car mount. For anyone into mobile computing, these two products are well worth considering.
I think it’s fair to say that if you use a smartphone like a MID, it isn’t going to last long. My N82 lasts for about three hours; less if I’m using 3G. The iPhone, about 4 hours under heavy use and the Android-based G1 seems to be even worse. The fact is that radios and processing take energy and although your smartphone will sit doing nothing for days on end, once you start using it connected over Wifi or 3G, the clock starts ticking.
There are ways around the problem and, to a certain extent, you can change your usage pattern to help the situation. Picking up emails, sending a few messages and then disconnecting is common practice but it’s not exactly Web2.0 is it! If you want to stay connected and keep services open for real-time internet applications you’re down in the battery-life danger zone. There are a few exceptions of course in the smartphone world but on the whole, it’s only because the battery is big. The Nokia E90 has a 5wh battery. The Athena has an 8wh battery.
I’m not saying that smartphones are poor, I’m just saying that we’re moving to the point where both smartphones and MIDs are requiring big batteries for hardcore web use and that means that fitting them in your pocket becomes a problem.
Do you use your smartphone in an always-connected and active mode? If so, what is your experience. Have you had to reduce your internet usage to preserve battery for voice usage? Do you carry spare batteries. How about a spare phone? Or do you just wait until you are able to pull out your laptop? Let us know about your smartphone battery life experiences in the comments below. Oh, one last thing. Check out this monster battery pack for the G1…It’s as big as the battery in an Aigo MID and makes the G1 almost as big as an Aigo MID!
Laptop Magazine have taken the testing a step further and pushed the NC10 to the absolute limit by dropping in an SSD and disabling the BT radio on their web browsing tests. The result…nearly 8 hours of surfing at minimum brightness.
While this may not be the best of real-life tests, it shows that the underpinnings are efficient and that’s exactly what you need on a mobile device.
The NC10 shouldn’t just be crowned the best netbook out there, it should be crowned the best consumer laptop out there. 10" and an Atom 1.6Ghz is good enough for 9/10 consumers so expect it to eat well into 12 and even 15.4" low-end laptop sales.
I’ve already posted about this, twice. Samsung have some great engineers.
I had the chance to look at an NC10 (#1 device on the portal right now) at the netbook meeting in Cologne on Saturday and the first thing I did was to measure the minimum drain of the device. Within minutes, I was seeing a fantastic sub-5W minimum drain.
This is lower than on most UMPCs and is a good indication that the electronics on the motherboard, the power components and the screen are well engineered. There’s no point putting in a low-power CPU if you’re going to lose the advantage it with crappy engineering. Take the Kohjinsha SC3. It uses the latest, lower clock, lower power CPU and chipset and yet even after hours of optimising, the base drain on it is no less than 7.5W. That’s 50% more than the, much bigger NC10 that doesn’t even use the low power CPU and chipset.
Battery life outweighs most requirements for me so considering that everything else on the device is up to scratch, I’m seriously thinking of getting a black NC10 as my only laptop and selling the M912 and Medion Akoya. They’re both excelent devices but neither of them are as well engineered as the NC10
One of the distributors of the Wibrain i1 has got hold of a Wibrain i1, snapped a few pics and made some comments in the forum here. If you’re looking the the ultimate Windows XP mobility device with the best battery life and best connectivity for, potentially, a very interesting price, keep reading.
The 1.3Ghz Atom-based device is based on the old Wibrain B1 design which was, quite frankly, an ugly brick to most people. There are some styling improvements which help it a little but don’t expect young geeks to be fainting at your feet when you whip it out. However, this is an action UMPC, not a flowery style-icon. It has the same easy-to-learn control layout (the touchpad is the best I’ve ever tried on a ultra mobile PC for example) and the same extremely high quality and brightness screen in a package that weighs 500gm. That’s 1.1lbs. It runs XP, has a 60GB hard drive, new SD card slot and re-positioned USB port. The real kicker is three-pronged though. 6hrs+ battery life on the standard 30wh battery, a 3G module and what looks like it could be an amazingly good price for such a setup.
Wibrain claim 7hrs on the standard battery. I’ve seen 6+ on the battery meter in hands-on testing and ‘Digital’, is now reporting 6.5hrs with wifi or 3G on. In marketing terms, this is an all-day UMPC in 500gms.
Final availability is still not 100% clear but early pricing indications at Mobilx look positive. 467 Euros ($600) pre tax without 3G and 532 Euros ($712) pre-tax with the 3G module. We’ll keep you updated on availability when we hear anything.
Remember my in-tent Samsung Q1 Ultra test? 9hrs battery life on the Samsung Q1 with 25% backlight? An average drain of 6.9 watts. It was impressive and since I blew up the Q1 Ultra doing some solar-charging tests, I’ve been missing those 5, 6 and 7hr figures. I was just getting over the trauma until I read this article about another Samsung Mobile product with great battery life.
Notebook Magazine have just done a full set of battery life tests on the NC10 Netbook and it looks like Samsung have once again worked their magic. The tests included continuous Wifi-on web browsing in battery saving mode which is a very reasonable test to be doing. Far better than the misleading 2001 Jeita test and much more ‘real-life’ than the Battery Eater Pro ‘turn everything and and run it at full-steam’ approach. The NC10 returned…
12% screen brightness: 7hrs 34mins representing an average drain of about 7.6w which is just a little bit more than what I saw on the Q1 Ultra.
50% screen brightness, the duration dropped to 6hrs 30mins which is an average 8.7W.
100% screen brightness, the test result reduced to 4hrs 38 minutes which is 12.3 watts drain.
I recall seeing this solution a while back on JKKMobile but Paul from MoDaCo has now got one for testing. Its a 47Wh battery pack for the HTC Shift from Mugen which should allow about 5hrs online time thus solving one of the HTC Shift’s biggest problems. It’s a tidy solution but at nearly $240, it’s a huge amount to pay for 5 hrs of computing time.
